The described embodiments relate generally to improving workflow dynamics by providing synchronized and updated information across content items and applications.
Content management systems enable users to share content items from one client to another client. The clients are computing devices that provide content items to a content management system for storage and synchronization with other clients. Content management systems typically store content items for a variety of computer applications including, for example, word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, and presentation applications. Oftentimes a user of a content management system wishes to update a number of documents in the content management system with a new or updated piece of information. For example, if a user who works at a company intends to give a monthly presentation to the board of the company, the user may wish to update the presentation each month with the latest sales numbers from the last month. However, the process of updating documents is usually tedious, involving many application accesses and copy and paste actions by a user. In the above example, even though both documents might be synchronized on a content management system, the user would typically have to copy and paste the latest numbers from a spreadsheet, or other such document, to the presentation before showing it to the board. In another example, a user might want to use a default paragraph across a variety of promotional materials and so would have to copy and paste the paragraph to each document. As illustrated by the above examples, propagating information across documents of different applications and in different locations can be a time consuming process for users.
The figures depict various embodiments for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.